Among the most appreciated musky ingredients known in the art of perfumery, muscone, or 3-methylcyclopentadecanone, have acquired a special renown. In spite of this, muscone has not found a widespread utilisation in the art for lack of economical synthetic processes for its preparation.
Among the variety of known processes, one may cite the following: ##STR6##
By making use of easily available starting materials, the process of the instant invention which is characterized by a limited number of reaction steps represents a new and original solution to the industrial preparation of muscone.